John Buchan

Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.

The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay, Mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbours, Colonel Scudder, bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop the agents with the aid of Alex Mackenzie but not only is he is chased by Chief Supt Lomas for Scudder's death but by the agents who are headed by Appleton who has managed to hide himself in a high-placed position in the British Government...

In London, a diplomat accidentally becomes involved in the death of a British agent who's after a spy ring that covets British military secrets.

Richard Hannay, a mining engineer on holiday from the African colonies, finds London socialite life terribly dull. Yet it's more than he bargained for when a secret agent bursts into his room and entrusts him with a coded notebook, concerning the impending start of World War I. In no time both German agents and the British law are chasing him, ruthlessly coveting the Roman numerals code, which Hannay believes he must personally crack.

The film focuses on the naval warfare around the Battle of Coronel and Battle of the Falkland Islands during the First World War. It was the last in a successful series of documentary reconstructions of First World War battles by British Instructional Films made between 1921 and 1927.

Hannay is a 1988 spin-off prequel series to the 1978 film adaptation of John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps which stars Robert Powell as Richard Hannay, a role which he reprises in the series, an Edwardian mining engineer from Rhodesia of Scottish origin. It features his adventures in pre-World War I Great Britain. These stories had little in common with Buchan's novels about the character, although some names are taken from his other novels.

Adaptation of John Buchan's novel, set in the 1920s, about three members of the English establishment who seek excitement by poaching on the estates of Scottish landowners.

Former spy Richard Hannay is drawn out of retirement to stop a criminal conspiracy involving hypnotism and blackmail. A sinister organisation kidnaps the children of prominent figures to manipulate global affairs, forcing Hannay to confront the deviously charismatic Dominick Medina in a battle of wits and psychological warfare.